The High Court dismissed David Carr’s personal injury claim after finding that a car driver’s sudden swerve before a 2008 crash was an instinctive reaction, not a deliberate attempt to injure him.
In a judgment delivered on 15 March 2012, Mr Justice Hogan found that Carr had banged on the driver’s window and tried to wrench back the car’s wing mirror as he rode alongside it on Leopardstown Road. The driver, Joao Olas, recoiled from what he perceived as a blow, causing his car to swerve. The court found that a wheel of the car touched Carr’s motorcycle, which then spun out of control.
The crash happened after an earlier altercation at a roundabout. Carr had turned back along Brewery Road to catch up with Olas, overtook traffic and rode beside his car. The judge found that Carr was not keeping a proper lookout and was probably riding just over a continuous white line. He concluded that Olas’s swerve was an instinctive response to the banging, and rejected the allegation that Olas deliberately turned into Carr’s path.
Carr was thrown into the path of a car driven by Jennifer Doran, who was travelling in the opposite direction. The judge found that Doran took evasive action and was “completely blameless”; she had no liability to Carr.
The judgment considered whether Olas could nevertheless be liable in negligence. It held that the relevant standard was how a reasonably competent driver would react to an emergency that he had not created, allowing for the suddenness of the situation. The judge found no negligence: Olas was not shown to have been speeding or failing to keep a lookout, and his swerve was an instinctive reaction to an unexpected perceived threat. The judge also said the Rules of the Road guidance against suddenly swerving addressed a conscious response, not an immediate instinctive reaction of this kind.
Carr suffered serious shoulder, wrist, rib and lung injuries, nerve damage, loss of effective use of one arm, scarring and depression. The judgment said he was living on disability benefit and was unlikely to work again. Despite those consequences, the court found no negligence by either defendant and dismissed the claim. The source records no damages award or other order.